Category: Security

Sean “Diddy” Combs and R&B singer Cassie reached a settlement Friday in an incendiary lawsuit she filed the day before accusing the mogul and entrepreneur of rape and a “cycle of abuse” during their decade-plus relationship.

No details of the settlement were released, though Combs’ attorney previously accused Cassie of seeking an eight-figure payout in recent months. Combs had denied the allegations through his attorney.

Cassie dated the famed hip-hop producer for about 11 years before they split in 2018. She filed her sex trafficking and sexual assault lawsuit against him in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York just days before the expiration of a “lookback window” that allowed adults who alleged they were sexually abused to sue despite the statute of limitations having run out.

“I have decided to resolve this matter amicably on terms that I have some level of control,” the singer, who sued under her legal name Casandra Ventura, said in a statement issued through her legal team. “I want to thank my family, fans and lawyers for their unwavering support.”

Combs issued a similar statement, saying, “We have decided to resolve this matter amicably. I wish Cassie and her family all the best. Love.”

Ventura’s attorney, Douglas Wigdor, said he was “very proud of Ms. Ventura for having the strength to go public with her lawsuit. She ought to be commended for doing so.”

In the lawsuit, the 37-year-old Ventura accused Combs, 54, of raping her in her home after she tried to leave him; physically attacking and injuring her; forcing her to engage in sex acts with male sex workers while filming the encounters; running around with a firearm; introducing her to “a lifestyle of excessive alcohol and substance abuse”; and requiring her “to procure illicit prescriptions to satisfy his own addictions.”

According to the lawsuit, Ventura met Combs in 2005, when she was 19 and he was 37. After signing her to his label, the suit alleges, Combs took control of her professional and personal life, and began sexual and physically abusing her with increasing frequency.

“He signed her to his label, Bad Boy Records, and within a few years, lured Ms. Ventura into an ostentatious, fast-paced and drug-fueled lifestyle, and into a romantic relationship with him — her boss, one of the most powerful men in the entertainment industry, and a vicious, cruel, and controlling man nearly two decades her senior,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit detailed bruises Ventura said she suffered as a result of the alleged abuse, as well as accounts of drug use, voyeurism, male sex workers and more.

Diddy’s lawyer, Ben Brafman, said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times Thursday that his client “vehemently” denied the “offensive and outrageous allegations” and accused Ventura of being “persistent” in demanding more than $30 million from Diddy for the last six months.

Brafman added that the lawsuit — which also named Combs’ businesses Bad Boy Entertainment and Bad Boy Records among the defendants, as well as Epic Records and Combs Enterprises LLC — was “riddled with baseless and outrageous lies, aiming to tarnish Mr. Combs’ reputation and seeking a payday.”

The lawsuit was brought during the one-year window provided by New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which created a one-year “lookback window” during which adults who allege they were sexually abused could sue despite the statute of limitations having run out. Other lawsuits were filed in that state this month against Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, music executive Antonio “L.A.” Reid and former Grammys chief Neil Portnow.

That window expires next week.

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© 2023 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

The death of former Premier Li Keqiang has reignited talk of economic reform in China, making him potentially a more threatening figure to Xi Jinping than if he were still alive, analysts told Radio Free Asia in recent commentaries and interviews.

Li died of a heart attack in Shanghai on Oct. 27 at the age of 68, shocking many in a country where members of the privileged ruling class typically live into their 80s and 90s, and prompting a number of suspicions and unconfirmed rumors around his death.

While online condolences were gradually limited by censors to a few set phrases and security was stepped up in Beijing, mourners in other parts of the country associated with Li carpeted public spaces with floral tributes, amid ongoing public dissatisfaction over Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s handling of the economy.

Li was buried with due honors, but at a low-key funeral ceremony that seemed designed to prevent any public outpourings of grief that might trigger protests, as they once did for former premier Hu Yaobang in 1989.

While Li’s political contribution to contemporary China was sidelined by his far more powerful boss, his death is widely regarded as a symbol of the end of an era of relative openness and economic growth in China, according to Zhang Lun, professor at the University of Cergy-Paris in France.

“[It was] a farewell to the era of reform and opening up in China — the complete end of that era,” Zhang told Radio Free Asia’s Asia Wants to Talk political chat show.

End of openness to reforms

Old Dominion University professor Li Shaomin, whose father Li Honglin was once a prominent theorist of the economic reform era begun by late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping, said it marked an end of any expectation that economic openness will eventually drive China in the direction of “free speech, the rule of law, democracy and free markets.”

“Li Keqiang’s greatest contribution was that his death woke a lot of people up from their dreams,” he told the show, adding that while the ruling Communist Party still likes to promise “reforms,” the word no longer means anything in Chinese politics.

“The term reform has been overused by the Chinese Communist Party, and has completely changed its meaning,” Li said. “When the economy improves, they suppress private enterprise, but they raise the banner of reform when it’s failing, put on a smile, and start trying to stabilize the relationship with the United States.”

It’s the symbolic associations with Li’s death that make him perhaps more dangerous to Xi’s rule in death than he ever was in life, according to Cultural Revolution expert and California State University professor Song Yongyi.

“Xi Jinping certainly regards Li Keqiang as a hidden danger to his rule, but if Li Keqiang were alive, he wouldn’t pose a greater threat to Xi than he does dead,” Song said, adding that Li’s death had led more people to question Xi’s rule.

‘Potential threat’

Former 1989 student leader and U.S.-based political commentator Wang Dan said that the conspiracy theories around Li’s death are “of great political significance,” even if they turn out not to be true.

“These doubts … are likely to have a major impact on the future development of Chinese politics,” Wang wrote in a Nov. 6 commentary for RFA Mandarin. “[They] show a further deepening of the general public distrust of, and opposition to, Xi Jinping.”

“It has set up this idea of Xi Jinping as a public enemy, which is spreading … as we see from the spontaneous commemorative activities for Li Keqiang among ordinary people,” he said, drawing parallels with mass, spontaneous public mourning for beloved former premiers Zhou Enlai in 1976 and Hu Yaobang in 1989.

“Those two mourning events weren’t just about mourning — they were about political resistance,” Wang said. “[Public] dissatisfaction will of course be suppressed, but it won’t disappear, just keep fermenting and accumulating.”

“That accumulation is a potential threat to Xi Jinping.”

Wang said the public suspicions that Xi was in some way linked to Li’s death may not be true, but they point to a growing sense that Xi is becoming “more and more like Stalin.”

“The question ‘who’s next?’ will be occupying the minds of many people,” he wrote.

Dissatisfied

U.S.-based liberal economist He Qinglian said middle-class millennials in today’s China are among the most dissatisfied with the current leadership.

“This generation was born in the most economically prosperous era of China’s recent history, but have encountered economic bottlenecks in adulthood,” she wrote in a Nov. 6 commentary for RFA Mandarin. “Universities are no longer places to cultivate the middle classes — many young people have yet to begin their lives and can only lie flat.”

“Under the strict monitoring of the authorities’ surveillance dragnet, China’s young generation is unlikely to stage a revolution — they can only seize this opportunity to vent their dissatisfaction,” He said.

“A lot of young people don’t even know what Li Keqiang’s main policies were … but that doesn’t stop them copying and pasting phrases like ‘the people’s premier’ and joining in this floral revolution.”

She cited a Weibo post from Lao Dongyan, a professor at Tsinghua University School of Law, who said the floral tributes “were a lament for the gradual dying of an era.”

“Buried deep inside were many people’s youthful years, their longings for the future,” Lao posted. “The systems and cultures that were painstakingly established during that era have been destroyed like rotten wood.”

Reversing gains

While He noted that there was plenty of dissatisfaction with the rampant corruption that went along with Deng Xiaoping’s ‘get rich’ policies, she said Xi is now seen as a leader who has reversed all of the gains of that era, despite his ongoing anti-corruption campaigns.

“Some people miss their good old days, while others are extremely dissatisfied with Xi Jinping,” she said. “We’re mourning reforms and opening up … as much as we’re mourning Li Keqiang.”

Political commentator Chen Pokong said the huge floral displays and online tributes must have had the Xi administration “in a cold sweat.”

“The general suspicion is that Li was murdered or died an unnatural death, and that there was a major political conspiracy behind it,” Chen said. 

“Li’s image as a moderate and enlightened reformer had really taken root in people’s minds, so they lamented his death as they had once lamented his sudden departure from politics.”

“Nearly everyone in China can see themselves in this down-to-earth premier,” Chen wrote in a Nov. 8 commentary for RFA Mandarin, adding that many had been impressed by his outspoken comment that 600 million in China still live in poverty, undermining Xi’s later claim to have eradicated it.

Yet Chen also pointed to wider political themes from Li Keqiang’s death, which “also symbolizes the end of the era of reform and opening up.”

“People instinctively feel that a darker era is coming, and that the future is dangerous,” he wrote.

Ryan Lastimosa was home recovering from surgery when he received a text message from his boss at Respawn Entertainment saying that they needed to talk.

After nearly a year and a half of developing a single-player game for the Chatsworth, California-based studio, Lastimosa was informed in March that the company was scrapping the game. His team of 47 workers faced losing their jobs.

“It wasn’t a surprise to me that the project was canceled. The writing was somewhat on the wall,” said Lastimosa, a creative director who had worked for Respawn since its founding 13 years earlier. “I had to get my mind in the right state to start addressing things that were a priority aside from game development. I had to make sure that my team was taken care of.”

Lastimosa started to look for other places within Respawn — and parent company Electronic Arts — that his team could move to in order to avoid layoffs.

At the same time, Redwood City, California-based EA had announced in March that it was cutting 6% of its headcount, about 800 jobs, and reducing its office space amid restructuring to focus on “strategic priorities.”

A spokesperson for EA declined to comment.

The game industry has corrected its course over the last year following breakneck growth, experts say, as publishers and developers adjust to post-pandemic demands, rising production costs and growing competition in the industry.

The result: Roughly 6,500 video game workers have been laid off globally since January, including hundreds at California-based companies, according to industry estimates. Some analysts believe the figure could be much higher because several companies have not disclosed the number of jobs they cut.

The layoffs have affected game and tech companies such as San Francisco-based Unity, Amazon’s games division and Riot Games in Los Angeles, among others.

Although the cuts represent a small portion of the total industry workforce, many see the last year of downsizing as particularly brutal for workers in an otherwise banner year for games.

“We’re seeing the wave of companies who, essentially, either they over-expanded or they hired based on certain expectations,” said Kevin Klowden, chief global strategist at the Milken Institute. “And every time that there’s a major merger of any kind or anything like that, it has a very real demonstrable impact on employment.”

This month, Amsterdam-based data firm Newzoo lowered its global game revenue forecast for 2023 to $184 billion, up 0.6% from the previous year but down from the $187.7 billion the company initially predicted for 2023.

The global games market is expected to generate yearly revenues of $205.7 billion in 2026, Newzoo said.

The cost-cutting has a ripple effect in California, which is home to 720 video game companies, nearly 700 of them game publishers, game developers or software developers, according to the Entertainment Software Assn. trade group. Several major publishers are based in Southern California, including Activision, Blizzard Entertainment and Riot Games, as well as the North American headquarters for Sega of America.

As of 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, the industry employed more than 152,000 people in the state, with $54.1 billion in total economic impact.

“In the U.S. alone, the video game industry has more than tripled in size in the last decade, growing from $15.2 billion in 2012 to $56.6 billion in 2022,” said Aubrey Quinn, senior vice president of the Entertainment Software Association. “No other entertainment industry experienced that level of growth.”

Despite job cuts, she said, video games remain a growth industry.

“These are high-paying jobs — more than double the national average salary,” she said. “More than 212 million Americans play video games regularly, so the demand for beautiful, compelling games isn’t going anywhere.”

In Lastimosa’s case, he was able to work with management to find work for many of the people on his team. One married couple was in danger of being laid off, he said, but he and management found a place for one person so both wouldn’t be unemployed. Lastimosa opted for a severance package and decided to leave the company.

“I was burned out and tired,” he said. “I realized that I just needed a break.”

To him, the outsize growth the industry saw during the pandemic is part of the reason for the cuts this year.

“We had a lot of investors and a lot of different types of funds invested heavily in game development once they saw that massive uptick in people playing games and staying home and buying lots and lots and lots of stuff digitally,” said Lastimosa. “And now they’re seeing that curve has dropped.”

In response to industry turbulence, Amir Satvat, who lives in Connecticut, launched a package of seven online games job resources that includes a job directory and a place for people to sign up to connect with mentors.

Satvat, a “top voice in video games” on LinkedIn, provides the service for free — as do the mentors volunteering their time. Nearly 9,000 people have signed up for his “Job Seeker’s Workbook” and more than 900 people have volunteered to be mentors and reviewers.

About 350,000 people work in gaming globally, said Satvat — the estimated 6,500 layoffs represent only about 2% of the industry. But the cuts are “still very troubling” even if they are a small percentage.

Several factors are contributing to layoffs, said Satvat. In addition to post-pandemic turbulence and the reality of cuts after acquisitions, layoffs also are the result of an influx of companies trying to break into live service games and greater competition for gamers’ limited screen time.

“Games are now longer than ever. They’re, in many cases, these 100-hour-plus epics,” said Satvat. “There are so many competing forms of entertainment, from streaming video to music to social platforms, that the average person only has so many hours in the day to dedicate to entertainment. And so it’s hard for all these titles to find a market.”

The increased cost of development means there’s more of a boom-bust cycle than before, he added, with greater pressure on every game release “for people to make it, and if they don’t, there’s consequences.”

Evan Tappero worked in Northern California in EA’s mobile games division on the interior decorating game “Design Home” before he was laid off in April. EA acquired the company that developed “Design Home,” Glu Mobile, for $2.1 billion in 2021.

Tappero’s primary role was running live operations for the game after working on it for six years, he said.

The 38-year-old was on paternity leave when the company announced it was making cuts. It wasn’t until he returned a few weeks later that he learned he would also be let go.

The news hit him hard as a new parent.

“The primary explanation was just due to changes in the market and the game industry as a whole, sort of rebounding from high times during COVID and seeing this lapse after that,” said Tappero, who lives in the Bay Area.

Although he was surprised, he said the potential for layoffs is always on game workers’ minds.

After six months of searching, nearly 100 applications and 10 interviews, Tappero is still looking for a new job.

“There’s a lot of competition,” he said. “You just kind of have to swallow it and keep going.”

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© 2023 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Taylor Swift on Saturday postponed the second night of her Eras Tour in Brazil citing the scorching heat that has stifled most of the South American country in the past few days.

Swift’s decision — which was announced approximately two hours before her show was scheduled to begin — came less than 24 hours after the death of a 23-year-old fan, who fell ill during Swift’s second song Friday night and was taken to a nearby hospital, where she later died.

“I’m writing this from my dressing room in the stadium. The decision has been made to postpone tonight’s show due to the extreme temperatures in Rio,” the multi-award-winning artist said in a handwritten note posted on her Instagram stories. “The safety and well-being of my fans, fellow performers, and crew has to and always will come first.”

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Swift took to social media to say it was with a “shattered heart” that she announced she had “lost a fan earlier tonight,” adding that she felt “overwhelmed by grief.”

The death of Ana Clara Benevides Machado was confirmed by Time4Fun, or T4F, the São Paulo-based entertainment promoter that brought the artist’s Eras Tour to Brazil.

While the fan’s official cause of death has not been released, but the city’s secretary of health said the young Swiftie arrived at the hospital just before 9 p.m., suffering from cardiac arrest.

Later on Saturday, T4F announced Saturday’s show had been rescheduled to Monday, Nov. 20, “due to adverse weather conditions today and to prioritize public safety.”

Swift is scheduled to play in Rio again on Sunday. She then heads to São Paulo for three more shows next weekend.

Rio de Janeiro is currently experiencing record-breaking high temperatures, five weeks before the official start of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

On Thursday, a day before Swift’s first show, Rio’s heat index hit 139 degrees, the highest number ever recorded in the city. The previous record, 138 degrees, was registered earlier this week.

Despite the oppressive heat, fans said water bottles weren’t allowed inside the stadium, according to several local outlets.

Minister of Justice Flávio Dino said in a statement Saturday that, going forward, water bottles for personal use would be allowed at concerts. In addition, producers of shows “with high-heat exposure must provide free drinking water in easily accessible ‘hydration islands.’”

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© 2023 New York Daily News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The latest entry in Activision Blizzard’s popular “Call of Duty” video game series was made in half the time of previous iterations, a fact that may be contributing to a spate of bad reviews about the game’s storyline, according to people familiar with the development process.

Critics have panned the game, the first big release since Microsoft Corp. closed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision last month, saying the storyline feels rushed. Most “Call of Duty” games are developed in around three years, but the bulk of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III,” released Friday, was made in less than a year and a half, said the people, who asked to not be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The abridged production schedule proved stressful for the development team, they said.

“Call of Duty” has generated more than $30 billion in revenue over the last two decades. It’s the most important series in Activision’s portfolio, with thousands of developers across the world. New “Call of Duty” games will always top the charts, but some of the makers of “Modern Warfare III” say they hope their new corporate owners don’t judge them too harshly for the negative reception after a shortened development cycle that was beyond the studio’s control.

The process was hurried because this year’s game was conceived to fill a gap in the release schedule following the delay of another “Call of Duty” title previously planned for 2023. “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III” was originally pitched to staff at Foster City, California-based developer Sledgehammer Games as an expansion to last year’s title, but it morphed into a full sequel during development, Bloomberg earlier reported.

An Activision spokesman denied that “Modern Warfare III” was originally an expansion and said it was conceived as a “premium game” from the start. But more than a dozen current and former “Call of Duty” developers said that conflicts with what they were told at the time. Some of the employees said the plan was left ambiguous during the first few months of development, while others said they were directly told it was an expansion. All said they were under the impression it was an expansion until much later in the process.

Aaron Halon, the studio head of Sledgehammer Games, said in an interview that some team members may have been convinced the new game was an expansion because it is “a new type of direct sequel” to the previous game. Unlike previous “Call of Duty” titles, “Modern Warfare III” allows players to transfer their weapons and gear from last year’s game.

Some staff at Sledgehammer, who had to work nights and weekends to finish the game, said they felt betrayed by the company because they were promised they wouldn’t have to go through another shortened timeline after the release of their previous game, “Call of Duty: Vanguard,” which was made under a similarly constrained development cycle.

For the first few months of the project, which was code-named Jupiter, the story was conceived as a smaller-scale “Modern Warfare” spinoff set in Mexico that would be more achievable on a short timeline than the usual globe-trotting escapades of a full new campaign. But in the summer of last year, Activision executives rebooted that story, and told the developers that instead they would be making a direct sequel to “Modern Warfare II” centering on the villain Vladimir Makarov and featuring missions all across the world.

The reboot ate into the schedule and forced the developers to complete the new campaign in roughly 16 months — the shortest development time for a new “Call of Duty” game in years.

The game’s story has received bleak reviews from the largest gaming outlets. GameSpot critic S.E. Doster offered a “mediocre” 5 out of 10 rating, and a declaration that the story “doesn’t do much worth seeing.” At IGN, reviewer Simon Cardy gave the game a 4 out of 10, and wrote that the game “feels hastily put together,” adding that “if this is the quality we’ve come to expect from ‘Call of Duty’ campaigns, maybe it’s for the best if a year or two is taken to reset and raise this low bar back to the heights of old.”

The early reviews focused exclusively on “Modern Warfare III’s” story missions and didn’t cover the game’s multiplayer and zombie modes.

Sledgehammer’s Halon said in a statement that the game was “a labor of love” and that his team has “worked hard to deliver on this vision, which has been years in the making.”

Analysts said that even a critical flop probably won’t change much about the series over the next few years.

“I don’t see it having a lasting impact on the franchise or on any of Microsoft’s plans with the franchise even if it is universally panned,” said Kevin Tsao, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. But a consistent drop in quality starting with this game, he said, might drive Microsoft to shift its strategy or cut back on the annual release schedule that “Call of Duty” has followed since 2005.

After “Call of Duty: Vanguard,” developers at Sledgehammer had originally pitched a project code-named Anvil that would be set in the universe of the company’s futuristic 2014 game “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare,” according to the people familiar. But before it could get very far, Anvil was shelved as the company was informed it was instead working on another “Modern Warfare.”

The nature of this new release was left hazy, but the scope was ambitious and included an update to the popular zombies mode, several multiplayer maps and a single-player campaign. Few developers were surprised when they were later told that the release would be a sequel to last year’s “Modern Warfare II,” but the shortened cycle took a toll on Sledgehammer’s staff.

Developers also said they were frustrated at having to run their content by executives from Infinity Ward, the Activision studio that’s normally responsible for the “Modern Warfare” series. Staff on the game said they dealt with inefficiencies waiting on feedback and making significant and sometimes unwanted changes based on directives from above.

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© 2023 Bloomberg L.P

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

With Kim Jong Un escalating nuclear threats from the North, South Korea has found a cost-effective solution: its homegrown fighter jets.

The country unveiled its first domestically-produced supersonic fighter jet, the KF-21, also known as the Boramae, to the public at the Seoul Airbase, joining an elite group of nations to demonstrate such technology. The KF-21 could boost the allies’ deterrence capability against the likes of North Korea.

The aircraft, introduced at the Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition (ADEX) 2023, was developed by Korea Aerospace Industries, and set for mass production in 2026. The homegrown project is a part of a broader plan to strengthen South Korea’s resilience in the face of increasingly intrusive neighbors that include North Korea and China. 

“We define the defense industry as a ‘national strategic industry,’ crucial for both security and the economy,” South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol said in a speech at the Seoul Airbase.

“We are committed to cultivating an environment that fosters the continued growth of the defense industry, bolstering its global standing,” he said, adding that the United States ally will aim to “establish a collaborative defense and security framework” among the like-minded nations.

The KF-21 offers a cheaper option to Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 Lightning II, serving both South Korea’s own military needs and the international market. As one of the U.S.’s key security allies, Seoul has already purchased F-35s.

Indonesia has agreed to pay 20% of the US$6.7 billion project cost for the KF-21. The two countries agreed in 2014 to work together to make the next generation jet, even though at one point after that, Jakarta threatened to exit from the project.

South Korea’s unveiling of the KF-21 – with comparable features to the F-35 – may enhance the military preparedness of the U.S. and its allies in Asia, broadening the spectrum of defense capabilities at a lower cost. 

South Korea has been actively modernizing its military capabilities: it has achieved milestones like successfully launching its first ballistic missile from a submarine and propelling its inaugural rocket to advance its domestic space program.

Its arms exports last year soared to an unprecedented US$17.3 billion, according to a statement from the Presidential Office on Tuesday. This surge was attributed to substantial contracts, encompassing the supply of K2 tanks, K-9 self-propelled howitzers, FA-50 light attack aircraft, and the Chunmoo multiple rocket launchers.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, South Korea is the ninth biggest global arms exporter from 2018 to 2022. Its growth rate of 74% over the previous five years was one of the swiftest in the world.

Seoul has set an ambitious target to take a five percent share of the global arms export market by 2027, aiming to elevate its status to the world’s fourth-largest defense exporter.

Six months after Nevada’s congressional delegation called for a better plan for fighting “superbug” Candida auris, the number of new cases in the southern part of the state has risen to record levels.

In October, there were 57 new clinical cases of the drug-resistant, potentially lethal fungus that can invade a person’s bloodstream, brain, heart or other organs, according to Nevada Division of Behavioral Health data. In the same month, 123 cases of colonization were reported in which individuals typically have the fungus in the folds of their skin, invisible to the eye, yet are not sick. Those people can still transmit the pathogen.

The fungus can spread from person to person and also from contaminated surfaces and equipment with transmission occurring most often in healthcare settings. Patients who have been hospitalized for a long time, or have a central venous catheter or other lines or tubes entering their body, are at highest risk for infection, public health authorities say. Healthy people usually don’t develop an invasive infection.

Since August 2021, when the first local cases were reported, there have been nearly 2,300 total cases in Southern Nevada – 904 clinical cases and 1,369 colonizations – at 42 acute-care hospitals, long-term care hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, according to data.

“The data suggests that enhanced screening efforts likely accounted for this increase,” division representative Dawn Cribb wrote in an email.

Although the number of clinical cases rose only slightly higher than in previous months, the cases of colonization — which are detected through screening people without symptoms — increased significantly. Cribb said she did not have figures on screening increases.

Worse outbreaks in U.S.

Last year, Southern Nevada experienced the worst outbreaks of C. auris in the U.S., according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. In 2022, Nevada reported 384 of the country’s 2,377 clinical cases.

In the spring of last year, the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services alerted healthcare providers to the outbreaks as first reported in the Review-Journal.

In April of this year, Nevada’s entire congressional delegation signed on to a letter to the CDC director asking the federal public health agency to “swiftly deliver necessary resources to the public health professionals and health care providers in Nevada on the front lines of this outbreak.”

The delegation asked the CDC to work with state officials to develop a comprehensive plan and to provide additional resources.

Since this call to action, no formal plan has been developed, according to Cribb. However, the state’s healthcare-acquired infection program continues to work closely with the CDC through monthly calls, she said.

In August, the CDC provided on-site training to program staff and performed infection control assessments at two facilities “to put the training into practice,” CDC representative Katia Martinez said in an email.

In a letter in May responding to the delegation’s request, then-CDC director Rochelle Wallensky wrote that the federal agency provides annual support to the state’s healthcare-acquired infection program, including $520,000 in base funding in fiscal year 2022 and an additional $20,000 to support fungal disease prevention programs.

The Nevada health department received almost $6.8 million in American Rescue Plan Act supplemental funding in the same year “to support this critical work,” Wallensky wrote. The money funded prevention and detection measures, including expanding laboratory capacity.

Screening high-risk patients is done on a voluntary basis by hospitals and facilities, and public health authorities say that levels of screening vary widely among facilities.

Before admitting patients, Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center screens high-risk individuals for C. auris, including people who live on the street, those with wounds and transfers from other hospitals and long-term care facilities, said Dr. Steven Merta, the hospital’s chief medical officer. The first cluster of cases in children in the U.S. was identified at the hospital last year.

When screening, which involves swabbing the skin, detects a colonized individual, the patient is kept in isolation and advanced disinfection technology is used, in which dry hydrogen peroxide is dispersed through the air to disinfect the environment, Merta said.

Merta said he was not surprised that Sunrise has reported the highest number of cases, considering its active screening of patients and that it is the largest acute-care facility in the state.

Authorities say that eradicating the fungus is unlikely in places where it has taken hold.

You “can control it and learn to mitigate the risk for the people that are the most vulnerable,” said David Perlin, chief scientific officer of the Center for Discovery and Innovation and a professor at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine.

Perlin said he wasn’t surprised by the growing number of new cases in Southern Nevada, which follows a pattern seen in earlier outbreaks in New Jersey, New York and Illinois. But he says the increase indicates the need for more screening, including in places outside of hospitals such as dialysis centers and nursing homes.

More than one in three people who develop an invasive infection die, according to the CDC. Many of these people have other serious medical conditions. The most common symptoms of an invasive infection are fever and chills that don’t improve after antibiotic treatment for a suspected bacterial infection. C. auris is growing increasingly resistant to the anti-fungal medications used to treat it.

A representative of the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services said earlier this year that as of late March, there had been 103 deaths in patients with Candida auris in Southern Nevada.

However, Cribb said her division no longer reports the number of deaths. “It is extremely difficult to determine whether deaths among such patients are attributable only to C. auris and not due to a pre-existing condition,” she wrote. “In addition, there is no national case definition for a death caused by C. auris.”

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© 2023 Las Vegas Review-Journal

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, arrived in Kyiv for talks on a mission to reaffirm Washington’s continued backing for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

Austin said in a post on X on Monday that he’s in Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian leaders. “I’m here today to deliver an important message – the United States will continue to stand with Ukraine in their fight for freedom against Russia’s aggression, both now and into the future,” Austin said.

Ukraine’s closest European allies are increasingly concerned about the U.S.’s ability to sustain support for Kyiv amid a thorny political spending debate ahead of next year’s presidential elections. Worries focus on tensions over funding in the U.S. Congress that threaten to leave Ukraine without sufficient aid to beat back Russia’s invasion.

Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the head of the military’s medical support service as he called for a “fundamentally new” level of care for troops wounded in the war.

Zelenskyy appointed Major General Anatoliy Kazmirchuk to replace Tetiana Ostashchenko as head of the Medical Forces Command. Kazmirchuk was head of the main military hospital in Kyiv.

There’s an “obvious” need to improve medical support for troops “from high-quality tourniquets to full digitalization and transparency in medical supplies as well as training and sincere communication with combat medics,” Zelenskiy said in his regular video address, explaining the decision. “Changes need to be made quickly.”

Ostashchenko had faced criticism including from volunteer activists and lawmakers over poor-quality equipment and medicines supplied to the armed forces. With the war approaching its 22nd month, combat operations are continuing along parts of the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, though rainy weather is continuing to slow the pace of fighting until winter sets in, according to an assessment by the Institute for the Study of War on Sunday.

Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks in several directions, including Kupyansk in the northeastern Kharkiv region and Bakhmut in Donetsk region, Ground Forces Commander Oleksandr Syrskiy said on Telegram. “The Ukrainian army continues its counteroffensive action to the south of Bakhmut, inflicting losses on the Russian army” he said.

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Dear Kid Whisperer:

I have two questions for you.

Am I mean?

Also, am I a bad person?

I ask these questions because I have been seeking parenting advice on Facebook recently. I have been trying to get some answers from people on topics like when I should have my 7-year-old start doing dishes or if I should have my 11-year-old start mowing the lawn. Almost everyone acts like I’m awful if I put my kids to work. I feel like either I’m right and my kids are capable of doing these things, or that I’m incompetent, or that I’m going crazy. Please tell me I’m not going crazy.

Answer: I see no evidence of you being crazy. You do not appear to be mean, and I doubt that you are a bad person.

In normal, face-to-face, human-to-human discourse, there is a rhetorical dynamic that has been happening since the advent of the word “parenting” in the 1960s. I call it “Cutest Answer Wins”: While standing in a group of human parents, one human parent says something “cute” like, “I just think if you love your kids enough, and listen to them enough, and hug them enough, they will behave and be wonderful people.” When people espouse this garbage, no one is very likely to contradict it because to do so might expose them to accusations of being mean or being bad people, or even that they must not really love their kids if they are not behaving. Meanwhile, human parents who agree with this nonsense will do so publicly, making them feel better while everyone else feels worse/lonely/crazy/mean.

Social media increases the power of Cutest Answer Wins exponentially. This human dynamic, which makes us afraid to be called out publicly and rewards people for saying things that appear to be cute and nice (but are incorrect), is just an inherent feature of social media.

Here’s an alternative to getting advice from social media. Go ask reasonable people who are older and wiser than you. If your own parents are still around, maybe talk to them.

You may want to get off social media altogether. If you don’t, I suggest never asking for advice on any platforms. Instead, you can be a brave person who refuses to play Cutest Answer Wins. This is how I would do it using your questions:

Kid Whisperer: I make my 7-year-old do dishes, especially BECAUSE it requires hard work and is kind of gross. I also make my 11-year-old mow the lawn, especially BECAUSE it makes him hot and sweaty, is difficult, and challenges him physically. I love making my kids better, stronger and more resilient by challenging them every day.

Also, I DO NOT CARE WHAT ANYONE THINKS ABOUT THIS. PLEASE DON’T COMMENT WITH YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW THE WAY I DO THINGS IS MEAN OR WRONG.

Judgy Parent #1: I am just trying to understand… you think you are helping your child by traumatizing them with work? I am offended by your lack of thoughtfulness in raising a global citizen who can truly empathize with others according to the Zurich World Charter of Niceness of 2008. We should all re-swaddle our children in hypo-allergenic extra-soft bubble wrap so as not to chafe their sensitive tushies. In summation, I am good, and you are bad.

Kid Whisperer: I will refer you to my original post. If you comment again, I will delete your comment. Thanks.

Stay resilient, my fellow strong parent.

Behavioral consultant Scott Ervin, M.Ed, is a parent and former teacher and principal. He is the author of “The Classroom Behavior Manual: How to Build Relationships, Share Control, and Teach Positive Behaviors,” published by ASCD. More information can be found at www.behavioralleadership.com

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© 2023 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The personal diary of Manuel “Tortuguita” Teran, an activist who died after exchanging fire with police near the site of the planned public safety training center, was filled with phrases such as “Cop cars love being on fire;” “Prisons were built to be burnt down,” “Burn police vehicles” and “Kill cops.”

The Georgia Attorney General’s Office is seeking to introduce the diary as evidence in the RICO case involving 61 protesters.

“These statements are a glimpse into the mind of a ‘Forest Defender’ and the attitudes kept by Teran and his co-conspirators,” reads the motion, filed Nov. 15. “He writes about the forest and his desire to stop the construction of the training center as well as his contempt and hatred for police.”

Teran’s family and friends have described the activist as peaceful, loving and helpful.

It is unclear when Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams might hear the motion but prosecutors are asking for a pre-trial ruling. In a hearing earlier this month, Adams ordered all discovery to be shared by the end of the year, all motions filed by March 15, 2024 and final pleas expected by the end of June.

Adams told defendants that she won’t accept negotiated pleas after June 30, 2024.

Teran was camping in the DeKalb County woods when a clearing operation took place on the morning of Jan. 18. During the operation, which included various local and state agencies including the Georgia State Patrol, troopers encountered Teran’s tent.

After being told to exit the tent and failing to do so, troopers shot “non-lethal” pepper balls into the tent to try to force Teran out.

According to investigators, Teran shot first and wounded a trooper in the stomach, before officers returned fire. The family has questioned that account. An independent autopsy, requested by the family, showed Teran was shot by police at least 13 times.

No criminal charges were filed against the Georgia State Patrol troopers involved in the fatal shooting, a special prosecutor assigned to the case announced last month.

While processing the scene, GBI agents were able to collect numerous pieces of evidence including Teran’s gun, a tent, shell casings from the fired rounds and the diary, according to the motion.

Prosecutors are arguing that Teran’s diary is non-testimonial and rules of hearsay should apply. According to the motion, Teran’s diary entries were not created with the primary purpose of creating evidence against the defendants; rather they were Teran’s personal writings.

The diary contains a variety of drawings, notes and personal writings with some consisting of anti-police rhetoric. One drawing shows a police vehicle in flames with “Burn police vehicles!” and “Kill cops!” written around the drawing.

Another drawing shows a police car on fire with the words, “Cop cars love being on fire.” A drawing shows a “Sheriff” building in flames with the words, “Burn down police stations! It’s fun and good!”

One entry is titled, “Killing cops is okay.” A separate entry states, “if the cops kill me, I want you to riot, burn down their stations and set their cars alight.”

“He writes about the forest and his desire to stop the construction of the training center as well as his contempt and hatred for police,” the motion states. “At times, Teran is angry and emotional at police, society, corporations and many other perceived “repressors,” and this sort of mindset renders his writings admissible as a hearsay exception.”

According to the motion, prosecutors allege Teran was a co-conspirator with the 61 defendants indicted on RICO charges since he was occupying the forest.

Writings in Teran’s diary corroborate the fact he was a part of the Defend the Atlanta Forest group, list crimes that should be committed and coordinated meetings to stop the construction of the training center, according to the motion.

In a statement earlier this year, Teran’s mother, Belkis Teran, described her son as peaceful.

“Manny was a kind person who helped anyone who needed it. He was a pacifist,” Teran said in a press release in February. “They say he shot a police officer. I do not believe it. I do not understand why they will not even privately explain to us what happened to our child.”

Prosecutors claim Defend the Atlanta Forest is an Atlanta-based organization that they say is an “anti-government, anti-police, and anti-corporate extremist organization,” with the purpose of occupying parts or all of the 381 forested acres in DeKalb County owned by the city of Atlanta and leased to the Atlanta Police Foundation with the goal of halting the training center construction.

In the motion, prosecutors claim Teran was a member of the Defend the Atlanta Forest group, due to the group claiming Teran as “one of their own” and admitting Teran was a “Forest Defender” on various social media posts. Teran’s death has been used as a rallying cry for many protests of the facility, with chants of “Viva, Viva Tortuguita!” being common during protests.

“Given that Teran was part of the conspiracy to occupy the forest and part of the overall Defend the Atlanta Forest movement, the writings in his diary are admissible as statements of a co-conspirator,” the motion reads.

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